This is an outstanding translation of these Greek texts. These are texts that many of us regularly teach in introductory classes, and it is a great help to have such a reliable translation: the translation is clear and accessible, but maintains an unusually strict adherence to the form of the original Greek. This makes it useful for advanced study as well. The running footnotes to the text are especially helpful for giving students the relevant points of historical and legal context for understanding Socrates's position, but they are sparse enough that they do not intrude in the interpretation of the text. This is the only translation of these texts that I will use in my courses.
This is a real rarity in Platonic scholarship--a synoptic translation of four important works on the life of Socrates; in other words, the translators use the same English words to convey the same important Greek terms in each of their translations in order to aid the reader in recognizing how those terms evolve in meaning and shape the drama of each of the works, or in short, in recognizing the dialogue which exists between the works rather than merely within them. A former reviewer seems to have missed the point of this work: if you want someone to TELL YOU WHAT PLATO MEANS, you can read a two line summary in an encyclopedia, but if you want to find out why Plato went and wrote an entire dialogue rather than a two line summary, you have to pay close attention to what he actually says. These translations are about as close as you can get without having advanced knowledge of Greek, and even then, the Wests note specific usages of key terms which even a native speaker of ancient Greek might not have noticed on a first reading, and which are largely ignored by the scholarly community. This is an ideal translation for students of politics, history, philosophy, and classical literature who want to know why the most profound and poetic civilization of antiquity put the first philosopher to death, and why he let them.
